Tag Archives: diary

This evening, I have made myself steak sandwiches, on ciabatta with mixed leaves mozzarella, sundried tomatoes and a little balsamic vinegar, drunk a bottle of pretty reasonable quality french red wine, and am now sipping an oak-aged Macallan single malt. What would make the night complete is a really good cigar, but one can’t have everything.

I assure you that at some point, I will stop taking about food and drink. Possibly when I’m dead.

At some point, I must bore those of you who haven’t seen Boston Legal by going on about how great it is at length. It’s not the first season of the West Wing, or anything, but it’s probably the best TV I’m currently watching, if only by virtue of the fact that it’s a bit less formulaic than House. Which, love it though I do, is just about the most formulaic show (that I’m willing to watch) on telly.

In the meantime: “Denny Crane! Trix are for kids!”

How I Know God Loves Me…

It is nearly the close of a lazy Sunday. I have put in some time on World of Warcraft, I have done a bit of writing, and a little coding – enough to make me feel like I have acheived a few things, even if some of it is only in a virtual world. I have eaten quite a lot of excellent bacon, too (because I bought a lot from the Really Good Butchers Downstairs yesterday) and that’s always satisfying. I have a DVD full of Boston Legal to watch. And I don’t have to get up tomorrow, because I don’t start work until Wednesday.

All of this is pretty good stuff, but it’s not how I know that god loves me.

I’ve been sitting here, reflecting on that fact that all this is very lovely, but what I really want is some cold beer, and alas, I have no spare cash. But, as I was about to put an old pair of jeans into the laundry hamper, I discovered a fiver I’d forgotten about. And thus it was made manifest: I am one of God’s Very Special Children.

So I’m going to go and buy something nice and cold and watch William Shatner being lordly all night. I shall see you all tomorrow.

“Everybody get out, the shop is closed!”

Well, perhaps not, but I seem to be doing other things at the moment, hence the lack of real-life updates in the last while. But you can all stop nudging me (and I’ve set those to go straight into the trash now, so you’re out of luck in the future), because look: I speak my wisdom unto you!

In short: the new job is a new job, with all the attendant stuff. More when I’ve got a better handle on it.

I am going to see Kodo tomorrow. If you are not, then I pity you (unless you saw them tonight), because Kodo are one of The Best Things Ever. If you do not love Kodo, then take your soul back and ask for a refund, because yours is defective. And in a week and half’s time, I am going to taste very fine chocolate during the day, and then possibly go clubbing in the evening for the first time in fuck knows how long.

Other good things: The roof in my room is fixed, and I’ll even be able to hang my curtain back up some time in the next couple of days. (I may not be sleeping much until then, of course.) I have recently re-read all my Powers collections, and they remain ace.

And that’s your lot. Any questions?

Meant to say something yesterday…

My workblog got the news, but I forgot to mention it here: I’m done at Sanctuary, and to be honest, the level of joy this brings on is hard to articulate. I’ll miss my immediate colleagues, who were a good laugh, but I’m so glad to be out of the music business I can’t tell you.

In 15 months, I have added one URL to my CV. And that only went live ten minutes before I left the office yesterday. (Robert Plant’s site if anyone cares.) One, out of five major projects I have worked on in that time. The rest have been held up by Sanctuary’s internal politics, which goes some way to explaining their less-than-a-penny share price as I walked out the door. As one might imagine, one project live in fifteen months is not the sort of thing that I like, as a professional web developer. It looks bad for me, and takes away almost all the pleasure I take in my trade – what I do is build tools for people to communicate with, and if they’re not being used to communicate, then what’s the point of the work?

But I’m done now, and will be starting at WAI on Monday. Roll on taking pleasure in going to work again.

Connected

Connected

By way of a change: a photo in my main journal. This is chiefly because it’s not a very good photo, so isn’t going to make my other journal, but it’s one that’s important to me. That’s my grandmother on the left, and the badly photoshopped baby that she’s talking to via webcam on the right is her first great grandchild, Orla, now slightly over a month old. (The baby has been photoshopped so that she stands out from the screen a bit.)

This, right here, is the magic of the internet. It’s this that makes me get fucked off with the people who mock it as for nerds, or worse, the nerds who’re blase about the whole thing, who laugh at people who talk with webcams, or who thing it makes them seem big and clever to dismiss this sort of thing as everyday.

This is an old woman, sharing in her great grandchild’s first christmas, when she didn’t think she’d be able to. Just because it’s not technically hard to do these days, does not make it any less special, especially when neither of the parties would be able to turn on a computer for themselves.

It was easily the best thing that happened to me this festive season, and all I was doing was watching. I hope you all had something this good in your christmas.

Away.

Bags: packed. (OK, this means shoving a showerbag and something to sleep in in beside my camera gear and some books, but still, I’ve done it.)

Devices: charged. (Because I cannot go away without at least three things that go beep.)

House: locked up. (Barring the front door, obviously, because I have to wait until I’ve left to do that.)

Amazon: cunts. (They have shipped one of my items now, three days late. It should, in fact, arrive in time for christmas. Shame I’m not going to be be here.)

Happy holidays, everyone. See you on the 27th.

Bastard Amazon

Some weeks ago, I order my mother’s christmas presents, and amazon assured me that I’d have them in time for christmas.

They lied, and I am faced with trying to buy my mother something at the airport tomorrow. This is the second time they have fucked me royally at the festive season.

I am not the only one they have done this to. They’ve shafted my colleague, too. And he’s provided a bit of help for anyone else that might be in the same boat. Do us both a favour, and pass the link around kids.

(And in all seriousness, if anyone knows anyone that works at Amazon, and would be willing to put this in front of them in a serious spirit of “we’d like to talk to someone about the standard of service you provide”, then please, do let me know…)

Before I forget:

I’ve half written several LJ entries and ditched them over the last few weeks, trying to do my usual annual job of working out where my head is at after another year. And today, on the tube home, I read the best summation I can think of of why I have:

“I think it’s time for me to ditch all that surface dialogue stuff and have a dark night of the soul instead. I resolve to write down what I really think and feel. Work out in words what it is to be me and once that is done my works that detail the deeply personal will illuminate the universal. But now that I’ve tried to think about what I really think I realise that not only will nobody else give a toss about what I think or feel, but I don’t give a fuck either.

We get tired. We get down. We get happy. We get hungry. We want love. We want to feel good about ourselves. We want to think that there is more than there is. We want to make the world a better place. We want to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.” – Bill Drummond, The Wild Highway